PROTO-ACCOUNTING ONTOLOGIES AND ADMINISTRATIVE CYBERNETICS IN THE ARTHASHASTRA: INTEGRATING CLASSICAL INDIC FISCAL RATIONALITIES INTO MODERN GOVERNANCE AND CONTROL PARADIGMS

Abstract

The intellectual genealogy of Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) may be more precisely theorized as a civilizationally sedimented, poly-epistemic superstructure, characterized by dense intertextuality and systemic integration of politico-administrative rationalities, normative jurisprudence, economic logics, and governance ontologies. Functioning as a metatheoretical scaffold, it orchestrates a synthesis of prescriptive and descriptive knowledge regimes that transcend reductive disciplinary compartmentalization. Within this epistemic continuum, the Arthashastra, attributed to Kautilya, constitutes a seminal and architectonic treatise that codifies an intricately stratified and procedurally deterministic framework of statecraft, fiscal governance, and administrative cybernetics. Notwithstanding the expansive historiography on the evolution of accounting and financial administration, dominant scholarly paradigms remain entrenched within Eurocentric teleologies, thereby engendering a persistent epistemic marginalization of the rigorously formalized fiscal doctrines embedded within classical Indic state theory.

The present investigation mobilizes an advanced hermeneutic-phenomenological exegesis, supplemented by a diachronic and cross-institutional comparative analytics, to excavate, decode, and systematically juxtapose the financial-administrative architectures articulated in the Arthashastra with the normative infrastructures and control logics underpinning contemporary corporate governance ecosystems and accounting regulatory frameworks. The analytical reconstruction demonstrates that the text articulates a highly granular, algorithmically oriented, and procedurally recursive schema encompassing treasury sovereignty, revenue extraction and optimization matrices, bureaucratic surveillance regimes, audit-centric accountability mechanisms, and anti-corruption compliance architectures. These components exhibit pronounced structural homologies and functional isomorphisms with the core axiomatic principles governing modern financial oversight systems, including internal control frameworks, risk governance protocols, and fiduciary assurance mechanisms.

By reinscribing these indigenous epistemic formations into the contemporary discursive matrix of accounting theory and governance studies, the study advances a substantively interventionist thesis: that Indian Knowledge Systems represent a profoundly under-theorized yet conceptually fecund reservoir for epistemic recalibration and paradigmatic reconstitution of prevailing doctrines concerning transparency, fiduciary obligation, regulatory integrity, and institutional accountability. Consequently, this engagement not only problematizes the hegemony of Western-centric epistemologies but also foregrounds the potential for a pluriversal reconfiguration of global accounting thought, wherein premodern Indic fiscal rationalities are revalorized as analytically robust and normatively salient contributors to the evolution of modern economic governance architectures.